The story of our new house

Now you know why we moved. Here’s the story about the buying of the new house.

The woman who lived in this house raised four children to adulthood in it. Then her husband died and her brother and sister moved in. All three were elderly.

The house was decorated in traditional old person, from the macrame blinds to the striped wallpaper. The brown shag complements the copper pipe decoration that hangs from the cottage-cheese ceiling in the entry.

We haven’t done a thing to it, incidently, in the year we’ve been here.

The woman lived in the master bedroom.

She was old, and she became sick. The sicker she got, the more she stayed in bed — in the master bedroom.

Ultimately, her siblings called her children, who now live in other parts of the United States, and said that the woman was no longer lucid. The children flew to California in early December and determined she needed to live in a convelescent home.

They wanted to sell the house while they were here. They told their Realtor to come up with the property’s market value and knock $300K off the price.

“Sell it today,” they said.

That’s when my Realtor interrupted my breakfast by cell phone.

They accepted our offer of full asking price that evening.

During the escrow period we had to get a professional home inspection.

The inspector found three kinds of mold in one room. The levels were “off the charts.” Guess where.

Meanwhile, the woman was healthy and had regained her lucidity, having spent a few weeks out of that master bedroom.

To add insult to toxicity, the seller had to pay $10,000 to get the mold eradicated and the house retested.